


as the feather falls

by radialarch



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Episode: s01e02 Some Assembly Required, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7759576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Keith, in free fall.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	as the feather falls

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to:  
> \- the twitter Voltron crew, who yelled continually about this show until I gave it a try;  
> \- NASA, for existing so I could crib details from their program for a robot space cats fic;  
> \- and idrilka, for all her enabling, without which this fic would not have been possible. ♥

There’s nothing like the desert.

Shiro had never really understood; he was always at his best around people. Once, he came looking for Keith, while the other cadets had gone to the city on weekend passes, and found him sprawled on the ground at the edge of the base, looking up at the sky.

“Hey,” he’d said, crouching down so Keith wouldn’t have to look up, “what are you doing all the way out here?” And Keith hadn’t known how to explain that here, between the sand and stars, there was a space where he could lose himself. That sometimes, the universe loomed so vast that it was almost like he didn’t exist at all.

It was the same reason he flew.

———

Keith’s on his fifth round of combat simulation when Shiro comes to find him.

“I thought you’d be here,” he says from the observation deck. “C’mon. Take a break.”

Keith briefly considers ignoring him, but his mouth is dry and his shirt soaked with sweat. “End sequence,” he tells the simulator, and waves Shiro inside while he looks for his towel.

Shiro comes armed with a pair of water bottles. “Thanks,” Keith says, cracking open the first. Half of it goes straight down his throat, before he pours the rest over his head. The second one he sips at more slowly, blinking at Shiro through damp eyelashes. “Okay, yeah, I needed that.”

“I know you.” Shiro grins at him while he towels off his face, and then says, “You know, any one of us would spar with you if you wanted.”

They used to spar together at the garrison. Shiro talked him into it. “C’mon,” he’d said, “it’s better against a person,” and Keith had never bothered pointing out that if he wanted company, maybe he shouldn’t start training an hour before reveille.

But then Shiro had gone, and Keith lost the habit.

“I don’t wanna bother anyone,” he shrugs. “The sim’s fine.”

There’s a look Shiro gets sometimes, when he thinks Keith can do better. It sticks somewhere behind Keith’s sternum and makes him want to live up to it.

“Listen, I know it’s hard,” Shiro says, wearing that look. “We’ve all been through a lot. But we’re a team now. We gotta trust each other.”

Keith says, “I trust you,” to be difficult, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

Shiro just laughs, patting Keith’s shoulder. “Well. I guess it’s a start.”

Shiro touches easily; he’s been doing that for years. Keith feels himself heating up like it’s the first time anyway.

“I should,” he says, when the weight of Shiro’s hand is too much for him to take. “Hit the showers. Gotta change.”

“Sure,” Shiro says easily, and waves him off. “By the way. Have you tried the blind nosedive drill again?”

Keith hesitates. “I didn’t wanna damage the lion.”

“Keith,” Shiro says. “The lion will be fine. Trust the lion.”

———

He’s counting the seconds in his head.

Keith knows anticipation makes him count faster, that he can’t trust the beat of his heart. He tries to think — they must be nearly there — his hand jerks on the controls —

He pulls out of the dive too late. One of the lion’s back paws catches on an outcropping, and they go tumbling.

“ _Dammit_ ,” Keith swears as he’s slammed into his harness. He’s been out here for a while; his shoulders are nearly bruised right through.

The lion skids to a stop and rights itself, almost daintily. The lion in his head gives him a worried sort of nudge.

“I’m fine,” he says out loud, breathing through the pain in his ribs. “It’s fine. I just need a minute to think.”

———

The week before the Kerberos mission took off, Keith crashed the simulator for the first time. He’d expected Shiro to be in pre-flight quarantine by then, but when the class filed out the door, there he was, waiting.

“What are you doing here,” Keith said, more clipped than he’d meant, because he wasn’t sure he could be a person Shiro liked right then, but Shiro just grinned and said, “I told Commander Holt I wanted one last meal in the mess.”

No one who’d ever stepped foot in the mess hall could believe that; but when it was Shiro, Keith almost wanted to.

Shiro must’ve come straight from his own simulation, looking a little worn, but happy. He still had his silver wings pinned primly to his lapel; the last time he would wear them, before they awarded him the gold.

“Tell me about your simulation,” Shiro said. Keith hadn’t meant to tell him, but it spilled out all the same: the steering system lock-up, a vent in the main fuel line.

“I had multiple systems failing,” Keith said, “complex, unrelated, _simultaneous_ failure, and dos Santos was asking me what I did wrong —”

“Mmm, she likes doing that.”

“I did everything right,” Keith nearly snarled, “I did everything I should have —”

Shiro said, “You should have called for help and aborted.”

“ _What_? I’m not gonna give up on the mission just ‘cause I couldn’t figure something out.”

“Keith,” Shiro said, gently. “Out there, the only thing that matters is if you come back.”

Keith hadn’t thought of it like that. He’d thought —

Shiro was a good pilot. That had to mean something.

“You,” Keith said, and couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Hey,” Shiro said. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Take care of yourself. Keep your nose clean.” He paused. “Well. Try not to give Iverson _too_ hard of a time.”

“I won’t fight if he doesn’t,” Keith said. “You should get to quarantine.”

Shiro smiled. “Remember: patience —”

“— yields focus,” Keith finished. “I know.” And watched Shiro walk away.

Five months later, they declared Takashi Shirogane killed in action.

———

Keith’s helmet had rolled under the seat. He tugs it out, considering the still-tinted visor.

He puts it on and very deliberately closes his eyes.

“C’mon,” he tells the lion. “We’re gonna try this again.”

He takes them up. There’s nothing to stop them; it was the first thing he noticed about Arus, the nearly endless sky.

He doesn’t know how high they are.

If he crashes, the impact might very well kill him.

He doesn’t let himself think about it and nudges the lion down, down, down.

Keith knows this: free fall is a total surrender to gravity. But in the moment before you hit the ground, there’s room to fly.

“Hey,” he says into the silence. “Could use your help, buddy.”

The lion in his head uncurls, like she’d been waiting for it. He can nearly feel the luxurious stretch of her muscles in his own, the quiver of her whiskers.

The lion opens her eyes.

For a moment, Keith is breathless, all his words driven out of his lungs. He can nearly feel the wind whipping by, the warmth of the sun against his skin. He’d thought he’d known what it was to fly, but this — this is like drowning in it.

“Is this what it’s like,” he shouts, though there’s no need for it, “to be a Voltron lion?”

And then — he is.

The other lions pass through his awareness, flickering. The green lion, carefully licking her haunches. The yellow, sprawled out in a patch of sun. The blue lion bristles at him, stiff-legged, but a flash of teeth and she slinks away, tail lashing.

The black lion is sleeping. Or —

No, the black lion having a nightmare.

“Shiro?” Keith starts to say, and then —

Comm chatter, in his ear. “That was great,” Pidge is saying. “Your kitty’s got some moves.”

“I totally thought they were gonna crash. And then the lion did that twist, and I was like, there’s no way that’s gonna work, but the tail came round, which, obvious counterbalancing, right —”

“What, Keith did that? There’s no way he did that. He probably had like one eye open or something, c’mon.”

Keith comes back to himself. It’s strange, to feel so small inside his own body.

“You guys better get out here,” he pointedly drawls into his mic. “Got a lot of catching up to do.”

———

Shiro isn’t in his quarters, so Keith tries the training deck next. Sure enough, that’s where he finds him.

He’s not training, though. He’s just — sitting, in the middle of the room.

“Shiro?” Keith says, stepping through the doors.

Shiro’s head snaps up, panicked. “Stop,” he says. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Is everything okay?”

“The invisible walls,” Shiro says. “They’re active.”

“Oh,” Keith says, and sits where he is. He’s pretty sure he remembers where they end. “How’d you get in there?”

“Put the walls on a timer,” Shiro says. “And then I memorized the configuration.”

“You planning to stay a while?”

“I don’t know.” Shiro laughs, a little shaky. “I guess I wasn’t really thinking about it.”

“I could stay,” Keith says. Presses his palms against the smooth floor. “Here. Or.”

“Or?”

“I could come through,” he says. “If you tell me where to go.”

Shiro hesitates. “I’ve been here a while. The shocks aren’t exactly a picnic.”

Keith says, “I trust you.”

Shiro rubs at his face. “Why do you want to?”

“You said,” Keith says, trying to pick through the words, “that the only thing that mattered was if you came back. I thought — maybe you hadn’t, all the way.”

He can see the set of Shiro’s shoulders going softer, slowly. “Okay,” Shiro says, like a surrender. “The entrance is to your left. Three steps.”

Keith stands, and starts his way to bringing Shiro back home.


End file.
